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Living at R&G was the best year of my life!

I'm currently studying at the university of Liverpool and I am about to go into my third year. During my first year I stayed at Roscoe and Gladstone halls of residence and it was the best experience ever! Staying at halls enabled me to make loads of friends and interact with a wide variety of people from different backgrounds. I was a bit wary at first because I initially apply for self catered ensuite but got the complete opposite. However I must admit I don't regret living there. Having to share a bathroom with 7 others is not as bad as it sounds, there is a cleaner that goes around every week to clean the bathroom, toilet and kitchen. The kitchen is very small and you have to share with 13 others but its not bad at all. You get breakfast and dinner, the meals do get boring after a while, but they're not too bad, you get a starter, main course and a desert for dinner. The main problem is the meal times, there are strict meal times, I can't remember exactly when they are but I do remember struggling to make breakfast (especially after a night out in town). Theres a laundrette, a social area that includes a TV and Bar, and a library. The entire greenbank halls has lovely fields where people can sit and enjoy in the summer. Overall Roscoe and Gladstone was the best decision I ever made and I wish I could go back! Best experience ever!

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R&G would be a good choice of halls

I went to Liverpool university between 1999 and 2002, and for my first year I stayed in Roscoe and Gladstone halls. I absolutely loved my time in R&G, and although things may have changed since then, I would confidently recommend them to prospective students.

The first time I went to see the halls was with my parents as part of an open day. I remember thinking how scenic it was (there's a pond type thing, probably won't be as amazing now but at the time was pretty unusual for halls), and it just had a nice feel about it generally. The halls are in a quadrant on four floors, and all the rooms have a small balcony (apart from the ground floor). It's a very sociable place to be, with people coming out on their balconies and shouting across to their friends, and you feel like you're never far from others because it's fairly small.

The halls offer meals which obviously costs a bit more than the self-catering halls, but for people who are away from home for the first time this is brilliant because it eases them into independence gently. I used to love getting up for breakfast and having a decent meal to start the day, and then they'd offer teatime meals, usually a choice of around five, so you only had to worry about feeding yourself at lunchtime.

The halls have porters who man the desk and sort any problems and give you your post. Your post goes into a pigeon hole and you give them your room number to collect it. The corridors are secured by key fobs, but there were always the usual problems with people letting strangers in and not waiting for doors to close before walking away. We never had any problems whilst I was there though, and as long as you remember to lock your room your personal belongings are secure.

I think there was some kind of "common room" with a TV and pool table somewhere, but we never used this because it was easier just to meet in friends' rooms and most people had their own TV in their room. The rooms are compact but have a sink area and balcony, a desk and notice board area to personalise the room to your taste. It was grim on first sight but I soon made it like home, and settled in really well.

There was a shared bathroom between 5 people per each corridor, but this never really posed a problem because everyone was doing different courses so we were all getting up and coming and going at different times. The toilet was also separate to the shower so you could still use it if someone was showering. There were extra toilets downstairs too.

I loved these halls, and made some good friends here. I can honestly say it was one of the happiest years of my life.

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modern comfortable halls, good bet for first years

Prospect Point is a new, well furnished and well situated private hall in Liverpool. It serves The University Of Liverpool, as well as John Moores. It also has private occupancy rooms.

The flats in PP have about 5 or 6 occupants. You'll get a shared living area with a kitchenette, sofa, table and TV. You get freeview, which can also be accessed in any of the rooms, Just remember you'll need to buy your own TV licence.The kitchen is small, probably too small for 6 people, and the cookers and extractor fans are a little out of date. They cooker takes a very long time to heat up and the extractor fan doesn't really do anything at all. It's supposed to operate the fans in the bathrooms at the same time, but it really doesn't seem to do anything.

The bedrooms are a very good size. Beds are small but reasonable comfortable and although it's really bright outside at night with all the streetlights, the blackout curtains in the rooms are amazing. The bathrooms are lovely. Very spacious. All the bedrooms are en suite and I've not seen a bathroom of this size and quality in any other halls of residence.

I mentioned before that the fans in the bathrooms don't work. This contributes to the huge humidity problems in the rooms. My window is always running with condensation, paper gets wrinkly from the damp, and I don't have to water my plants ever! Everyone else I've spoken to in Prospect Point reports the same problem. Maybe fortunately, the heaters are over-powerful so you end up having to open a window, which helps cure the damp. Turning the heaters down even slightly means they don't have any effect whatsoever, and the room gets baltic.

The walls here are very thin. I can hear next door's conversations and the ambulances that regularly pass, as we are over the road from the hospital. As it is primarily a first year block, there's always someone coming home late and making loads of noise, meaning a good night's sleep can be difficult.

Prospect Point allows smoking in rooms. Although they do not allow smoking in shared areas such as the kitchen, they do not enforce this rule. The smell of smoke, even from just one person smoking in their rooms quickly fills the whole corridor.

The rent in Prospect Point is very competitive. You can pay a lot more for a similar, but not quite as well furnished flat elsewhere in the city. Prospect Point is probably about a 20 minutes walk from town, 10 minutes from the station and 10 minutes from the university. Directly below Prospect Point are takeaways, connivence stores, a chemist and cafes.

Prospect Point has 24 hour security and huge gates, so it is a very secure area. Fellow students often comment on how well locked up the rooms are. I need to pass through 3 different locked doors and gates before I even get to my room, which also has a lock on it. Although there are car parking spaces here, and rather a lot of them, you are only allowed to have a car here for loading and unloading. 95% of the parking spaces are empty all the time, I never did work out why.

I think that if you are going to go into halls, Prospect Point is great for facilities but falls down on social aspects. It's very difficult to establish friendship groups here, as there are less people in the flat, and you are very isolated from the majority of students, who are off campus. If you are unlucky, like I was, to fall into a flat with people you don't get on with, it can be very difficult.

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Movee here!

Words cannot not describe the amazing time you will have in this hall! Ignore all the things about food getting stolen, noise, neighbours, etc..because yes this will happen, but i think I'd be more worried if this didn't happen in a halls of residence..and also this will happen in any halls that you go too. So just make the most of it..Dale hall is an immense place to live, i guarantee you will enjoy every minute! :)! It also has a library, tennis and squash courts, porters (which the majority of the other halls don't have!) and cleaners..talk to them, they're really nice! A games room and 2 common rooms, (there will about 60 of you squeezed around this TV when xfactor is on!) Oh and make friends with the boys on A corridor..they have cookers and if your real nice they may give you a slice of pizza after a night out!

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Avoid this place like the plague

Having visited my son for the first time last weekend I was appalled at the state of the Lady Mountford Hall - part of the Carnatic Halls complex of Liverpool University.

This place is a HOVEL - the rooms are very small and in deperate need of refurbishment. The main source of lighting in the room is on single fluorescent strip light.

The seperate toilet and shower areas are primitive. The connecting corridors are very narrow and claustrophobic and have pipes running along the ceiling - more reminiscent of a gulag than the refuge.

There are no areas for the residents to socialise within the Hall. The 'kitchen' area is a small, shoddy, ill equpped area. Admittedly the students eat their communal meals in the main cafeteria on the site but you have to get there early otherwise the choice of food is non-existent.

The windows are filthy and the bed is small with a lumpy mattress. The walls are painted magnolia with hideous dark green woodwork.

The block cleaner is more interested in whinging and drinking tea than cleaning - but I have some sympathy with her as working here must be a desperately depressing experience.

It is a shame about the state of the accomodation as the complex is a leafy site in a relatively nice part of Liverpool with good public transport links to the centre of the City

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Well worth doing once in your life!

I lived in Dale Hall in my first year at the university. It was the most expensive choice! The bathrooms were shared between two of us, which wasn't so bad, just hope you get a clean bathroom mate! The hall was girls only.

The rooms were a horrible colour green, but pretty spacious, considering it's halls.

The kitchen was a bit gash, two microwaves between 18 people, and no cooker!! But the halls were catered. Tea was a bit of a pain though, the queues are very long and you can be waiting hours, if you're near the end there's nothing left, but they are a good way of meeting new people when you first move in.The halls can get noisy, and it can be hard to sleep or revise sometimes/most of the time.

Things get stolen from the fridge. Hundreds of people had access to our corridoor and kitchen, so once even the fridge was stolen, by other students, but I know of some incidents when proper thieves broke in through windows and stole laptops etc.

The most annoying thing is the cleaner, who comes in to clean when your trying to sleep.

Apart from that if you partying, like I did, it's the place to be!

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"Food getting nicked"

I lived in Lady Mountford Hall during my first year (5 years ago!)... this is my take on it.... LMH is divided into blocks of 3 floors with 12 rooms each. Each floor shares a kitchen, bath, shower, 3 toilets with a larger communal kitchen on the 2nd floor and a communal drying room on the third. Each block is mixed but each floor is either male or female. The rooms are of a reasonably good size and the walls are NOT sound proof... so hope your neighbour does not live for the night! It is a little bit of a pain sharing showers etc. but they are cleaned daily as are your rooms. Food inevitably goes "missing" from the fridge... especially alcohol! THE ATMOSPHERE is what's really good about each block being seperate... you are like one big family... with the gossip being particularly tasty! (did you see that moose he...).... On the other hand each block has its own atmosphere and I know some of the blocks just did not get along at all... A further note.... If you are doing Dentistry/Veterinary science/Medicine... bring a good pair of ear plugs as the rest of the uni finishes exams just before you start...and it WILL be noisy... and they WON'T keep it down... you have been warned... but the situation is similar in the other catered halls... CATERED HALLS ARE NOT THE PLACE FOR PEOPLE WITH LOW TOLERANCE THRESHOLDS... YOU WILL GET ANNOYED BY SOMETHING AT SOME POINT AND THE ABILITY TO SHRUG IT OFF IS ESSENTIAL... Apart from that... halls are THE place to be in first year.... unless you'd rather know as few ppl as possible...

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I`ve not lived in Melville Grove myself - I`ll say that upfront to be totaly honest. However my boyfriend and a lot of other friends DO live there, so I spend a fair bit of time both in the halls andthe surrounding area. There is a HUGE problem here with security, but I`ll get to that in a moment. The rooms themselves are relatively small but quite well designed. You get enough space to keep all your stuff without any problems, and a sink in your room. There are bathrooms and showers, as well as a bath and a shared kitchen, in each house. Each house has 7 or 8 bedrooms in it, which means that the facilities aren`t overcrowded. However, all this isn`t very important. What matters most about Melville Grove is the area it is in. The security is appauling, and as a result it can be quite dangerous living here. My boyfriend is a large scouser, so he has (touch wood) been OK so far since he knows the danger signs and when to get the hell out of a situation. most people living there are either small, female, foreign or a combination of the three, which means that they are quite likely to be mugged at some point. This has happened in the middle of the day as well as at night. Rooms have been broken into, with the occupant being forced to hand over money at knife point. This spoils what would otherwise be an excellent place to live. It is close to the city, the rooms are quite nice, it is right by the university. It`s just the security which relaly lets it down. Basically if you value your life think long and hard before you consider moving here.

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I have been staying at Dale Hall for the last few days as I was attending a conference in Liverpool. I haven't lived there as a student and don't know much about the ambience of the place during term time or how much it costs. However, although I didn't stay here for a long period of time, my visit gave me some idea of life in this hall of residence. Rooms - The rooms are a reasonable size and the plus point is that you only share a bathroom with one other person. The layout is quite strange; there is one door and then a tiny hallway with three doors leading off from that. Two are bedrooms and one is the bathroom. The rooms have a built in wardrobe and a shelving unit that looks like it should be filled with the kinds of ornaments old ladies like. The beds are very narrow and the mattresses are covered in squeaky plastic so if you were staying here for a year I would recommend getting a blanket or mattress cover to put over it. Other furniture includes a desk, desk chair, coffee table and more comfortable chair. However, most of the furniture in my room bar the bed were relics from the heyday of seventies laminate. The rooms are painted magnolia, the colour of sanatoriums, but the carpet and curtains are green so it all seems fairly fresh. When you have personalised your room I guess it would be quite nice but without any pictures up visual deprivation is strong. The bathroom sadly has no window, but contains a toilet, basin, heated towel rail (why?) and very small but very deep bath. Facilities - Each corridor has a kitchen with a sink, small fridge, microwave, 2 hobs for cooking and an ironing board. The kitchen is fairly large but there seem to be about 20 rooms in each corridor so I would imagine there would be a battle for fridge space. But food always gets stolen in halls anyway so maybe that’s not too much of a problem. The kitchen in A corridor seems to be the nicest! There is also one ACC phon e in each corridor. You need to register with ACC to make external calls but all internal calls are free and that means any university extension number as well. Communal facilities – Dale Hall has a TV room, games room and a reading room unsurprisingly containing a library. Apparently there is a gym but it is very small and only has weights in it (I’m told). Dining room & Bar – these are confusingly over the road at McNair Hall. The food seemed fine but there seem to be lots of stupid rules about the food combinations you are allowed to have. For example no salad with any hot food. If they were enforcing this at a conference I would imagine term time would be much harsher. McNair Hall has quite large grounds but dangerously there are lots of ponds near to the bar. There is also a small shop and cash point here. Transport links – You would need to catch a bus or train to get into the city centre. Mossley Hill Station is very close and it costs £2 to get a train to Lime Street, they leave every 20 minutes during the day. You can also get trains to Manchester, Warrington, Sheffield, Nottingham and even Norwich from here. The halls are less than 5 minutes from the train station. For nights out you will end up having to get taxis though. Dale Hall is in a pleasant, leafy area of Liverpool and some of the rooms are very pleasant views. There are a few local shops and it has good transport links. The facilities are of a similar standard to other halls of residence I have seen. Although the halls seem to have been maintained well, some of the facilities of a more modern hall are not here. The major downside being a complete lack of showers! The main downside is that the halls seem very sixties and they have not been modernised. And of course the Stalinist rules of the canteen.